Lawrence Schiller

American · b. 1936

Lawrence Schiller is a legendary American photographer, filmmaker, and author whose career has placed him at the center of some of the defining events and personalities of the twentieth century. Over six decades, he has photographed and documented figures including Marilyn Monroe, Norman Mailer, Muhammad Ali, O.J. Simpson, Robert F. Kennedy, and Nikita Khrushchev — producing an archive that is as much a history of American culture as it is a body of photographic work.

Born in Brooklyn, Schiller began his career as a photojournalist in the early 1960s, shooting for Life, Paris Match, and Newsweek. His photographs of Marilyn Monroe on the set of Something’s Got to Give in 1962, taken in the weeks before her death, are among the most intimate and historically significant images of Monroe in existence. They show an actress at the height of her beauty and at the edge of personal crisis — and they remain essential documents of one of American culture’s most mythologized lives.

Books, Films, and Legacy

Schiller has collaborated with Norman Mailer on several major books, including Marilyn (1973) and The Executioner’s Song (1979). He has directed documentaries on the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and the trial of O.J. Simpson. His archive, spanning six decades of access to history’s most consequential figures, is one of the great photographic legacies in American journalism.